dedleg.com

…Or maybe just two stroke exhaust.

Yamaha RD350YPVS, photo via The Classic Bike Buyer’s Guide

The caption reads, “Paddock jacket, jeans, trainers, a YPVS and wheelies. Teen heaven.” The Powervalve might have come out almost 30 years ago now, but come on… that moment in time is still looking mighty fucking heavenly. When I saw this photo the universal forces of cool literally bound me to scan it in at once. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but to me, there are only 4 that seem to matter here: living in the moment. Utterly.

That last little “sentence” tacked on to the end technically makes it 5 words, but I was just being verbose — and my writing tends to be full of fat just begging to be skimmed off. And that’s part of the charm of these old motorcycles — there is very little fat here. In a modern age full of fat (both literal and figurative), things that are stripped down to their essential purpose are incredibly attractive. In the case of old bikes, that purpose is obviously being super fucking awesome. And god damn they do their job well.

For me, it’s these ideas that bind skateboarding and motorcycles together — the same things essentially attracted me to both. They’re fast, they’re rugged, and they don’t leave much room for anything besides the fundamentals.